This invention relates to an educational aid and a method for using this system to facilitate the instruction of students to read. More particularly, the invention relates to an educational system and a method for using it to facilitate the rapid development of sight-word vocabularies.
The first step in teaching a student to read is developing a foundation of fundamental words which the student can recognize on sight and then expanding this foundation over time. Educational tools in the form of books, flash cards, rebus symbols, orthography, and other devices have been employed in the past. These educational tools are generally integrated into a teaching plan which requires active involvement of an educator. Generally, the educator employs a rote memorization technique in which the educator articulates the word and the student repeats the word aloud while viewing and trying to remember the written representation of the word. In this manner, the student memorizes the visual sight of the word together with its enunciation.
However, some students, especially children, have short attention spans. It is difficult for them to pay attention for an extended period during a laborious process of teaching by a rote memorization technique. Even though prior educational tools employ a variety of different methods and devices to help reinforce the newly learned words in the mind of the student, learning by rote memorization is still difficult and the student can lose interest. Therefore, prior methods make it difficult for the new student to recognize fundamental words on sight.
Recognizing that typical educational tools are tedious and unappealing, inventors developed different educational tools to increase the interest and attention span of students. One such educational tool is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,524,143, issued to W. D. Smith. The Smith patent discloses articulating words to a rhythmic or musical beat (e.g., a phonograph record) accompanied with corresponding text of these words. The text includes indicia marking each single syllable word or each syllable within a multiple syllable word. This indicia is used to indicate the natural rhythmic upbeats and downbeats to the words in common stories. However, the system is limited to use with rhythmic or musical beats which tends to focus the student's attention on the rhythmic beats through the story, not on the specific words in the story. Furthermore, the system requires a student to have a rather sophisticated grasp of music prior to using the system. Therefore, the system would not be useful for instructing younger children.
Another variation on the rote memorization technique is taught in U.S. Pat. No. 4,437,837, issued to Schnettler et al. The Schnettler et al. patent teaches the use of rebus indicia with high frequency words (i.e. the, in, a, and) and also the use of word cards as reinforcement material for the memorization of these high frequency words. Schnettler et al.'s use of rebus indicia and word cards may assist in keeping a student's attention but still requires extensive employment of rote memorization techniques wherein the educator articulates the words and the student repeats them in turn while viewing the visual representation of the word. The Schnettler et al. technique also has a fundamental limitation in its ability to expand as the student's vocabulary expands. Rebus indicia, such as cat, dog, wagon, house, etc., is only useful in teaching simple high frequency words. Thus, this system is only useful to lay the sight-word foundation for the first handful of words and loses its value when the student incorporates these simple nouns (dog, cat, etc.) into their sight-word vocabulary. Additionally, rebus indicia itself has a fundamental limitation in that, in general, it can only be used with monosyllabic words.
Other educational tools assist a more advanced reader. For example, the use of indicia for the syllabication of words is taught in U.S. Pat. No. 146,631, issued to C. Allen. The Allen patent teaches a method for designating and accentuating syllables with marks to facilitate instruction in reading. The Allen patent may be helpful in teaching pronunciation, enunciation and elocution. However, it does not lend itself to initial stages of learning to read by laying a foundation of fundamental words. The Allen patent also does not place the indicia on one syllable words to focus the student's attention on each individual word, nor does it teach a method for imprinting the words in the student's memory through the use of reinforcement material for the development of a sight-word vocabulary, as in the present invention.
The prior art suggests many ways to keep a student's attention while subjecting the reader to rote memorization techniques and many ways to assist the student's pronunciation of words. However, no system takes advantage of a student's, especially a child's, existing knowledge of certain simple texts, such as nursery rhymes, songs, poems, slogans or stories or that student's natural ability to rapidly learn and remember such a text without ever having learned to read that text. The natural ability to learn and to repeat this simple information can be utilized to build extensive sight-word vocabularies in a relatively short period of time.
It would be highly desirable to have an educational aid and a technique to facilitate rapid development of sight-word vocabularies in a challenging and interesting manner using the student's natural ability to hear and remember simple information such as songs, poems, slogans, rhymes, or stories without forcing rote word memorization techniques on the student.